Cut up your draft with Mason Currey

Harriet is partway through the first draft of her novel.

She has a clear idea in her head of the character and what she wants to write, but hasn't done any structural work yet.

While we leave Harriet to find some paper, scissors, and pens, I want to return to Mason.

He prints out his drafts, cuts up each of the paragraphs, and reassembles them.

The structure and flow become clear when it's physically laid out, but also the process becomes more fun.

I told Harriet that Mason calls this a funky art project.

Let's hear more about that.

And I think the other reason it works is because it feels a lot more fun than working on the computer.

It suddenly becomes sort of a funky art project, and I'll even sometimes use, uh, different colored paper.

I like to, like, print it all out on white paper and cut out all the paragraphs, and then if a paragraph, like, extends across two sheets of paper, I will tape those together so that I, I just have these units of paragraphs.

And then, um, as I'm doing this, I might cut out a sentence from one paragraph and a sentence from a different paragraph and tape those together, or I might take the best things and tape them onto these blue sheets of paper I have, which i- it just starts to feel like this sort of, like, elementary school art project in a fun way.

And, um, sometimes, like, I, I n- almost never listen to music while writing or editing, but during this phase, while cutting things out and taping them together, I'll listen to music, and that can be part of what makes it fun.

We spend so much time staring at our screens.

Any approach that gets physical and hands-on with our words is gonna boost our mood and offer an injection of energy and renewed attention.

And it really does sound like a lot of fun.

Colored pieces of paper, sticky tape, music playing in the background.

But it's not just larking about.

How to keep going on a big project is a serious issue.

Making our writing more enjoyable means we're more likely to return to it.

Switching up tasks between those that feel like a slog and those that are fun is critical to creative persistence.

I can't emphasize it enough.

Feeling good about your writing gives you a better chance of returning to it, and most importantly, finishing it.